Microsoft WorldWide Telescope Presented at TED; Huge Expectations Set
Mark Hendrickson
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So the rest of us can’t quite cry along with Robert Scoble - not just yet - but the attendees of TED had the opportunity to do so today when Microsoft presented the stargazing software we wrote about last week called WorldWide Telescope.
Microsoft has launched a website for the service that says “coming in spring 2008″ and provides a FAQ sheet along with a couple video montages of people reacting to the product. These videos don’t show the product in any substantial way but rather serve to further the hype (apparently it wows not only tech bloggers, but children, well-renowned professors, and other experts as well).
Few people have seen the product yet, but based on the testimonials on the website, it better be significantly better than the existing Google Sky, which launched last August as part of Google Earth, and the open source Stellarium (which is hugely better than Google Sky already).
Below is the only screenshot of the product that has been published so far. From what we can gather from the website, WWT is built on top of Microsoft’s Visual Experience Engine. It will also sport these features:
- WorldWide Telescope is an observatory on your desktop, allowing you to see the sky in a way you have never seen before; individual exploration, multi-wavelength views, stars and planets within context to each other, zoom in/out, and a capability for anyone to create and share a tour of the universe.
- The Visual Experience Engine delivers seamless panning zooming around the night sky.
- WWT delivers seamless integration of science:-relevant information including multi-wavelength, multiple telescope distributed image and data sets, and one-click contextual access to distributed Web information and data sources.
The product is based on Jim Gray’s SkyServer and is therefore considered an extension of his work.
what’s up with the kid’s reaction video? it’s like a rated G version of “two girls one cup” reaction videos on youtube. lame….
Congrats Jim Gray!
R.I.P. Brother.
I wrote more about the World Wide Telescope and why it made me cry here: http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/.....telescope/
I’ve seen it, way better than Stellarium already. The multi-survey look at a region that Scoble talked about is kick-ass, and I suspect will have research impact too. Even though I’m usually a google fanboy, this is one place where google dosent even hold a candle to the other offerings.
Go ahead and call me a paranoid cynic, but Scoble’s original hype said that you had to see it to believe it. Okay so he’s a geek and can be forgiven for getting excited over what 99.999% of the world’s population would say ’so what’ to.
This combined with Scoble’s *clear* need for forgiveness and the constant non apologizing apologist remarks from a *former* employee of the world’s largest and most devious marketing organization all too clearly with obvious inside communication channels.
Ever play connect the dots as a child?
Still, no one gives a shit.
Video is up on Ted.org, I’m not blown away and I’m not crying. Whoop-de-do. Only mildly slicker than Google Sky.
I find stuff like EarthSim far more impressive.
The TED video is here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/224
Note what the astronomer says. Totally disagrees with #7. I wonder who is more credible? An anonymous commenter or an astronomer who actually knows something?
Thank you Robert for sharing the TED url. I got really inspired at the sneak preview. I can’t wait download it.
To the creators of the WorldWide Telecope, great job!
It seems that this is the same as Celestia. http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
I had a chance to see this at Microsoft’s Tech Fair (I forget the name of the gathering) which was for MS people to see their own products. I was BLOWN AWAY by the ability by anyone to see pretty much anything the largest telescopes can see…and all by clicking on a galaxy, a star, a nebula. You name it: you can see it in a very large way.
It comes out in a couple of months. Can’t wait!
I would like to share with you the happy, I was admitted to Harvard University this year, we bless me!